I notice now that the word Sonusman has been unblocked on the forum.
It's like so many things ... a new product comes along, the firmament rage against it and eventually a happy medium is reached. Give it about two more years and I think everyone will be a lot more philosophical about the whole cheap/Chinese equipment debate. So what if Ed has a slightly different opinion now to four or five years ago? We don't stay the same forever you know!!
There's actually a couple of debates rolled together here:
1. Behringer makes functional/unusable stuff at a great/revealingly low price, that for the money/time spent on the phone to their returns department is perfect/a false economy for users at all levels on a budget/people with no buying sense.
2. The slightly less exciting argument that that Behringer DI box is actually a very good box regardless of price. As Ed said to me the other day, "that box passes 20-20 better than
most boxes". I happen to like that they're very flexible and chunkily built whilst being significantly cheaper than the BSS ones they're copied off (cosmetically at least). I've never really bothered to compare the sounds from each, or any of the various EMO, Leem, Samson, Sound Lab and other boxes I use ... mostly because none of them has ever caused me any problems in real-life use (and I'm certain my PA amps and horns, not to mention the rooms, cancel out any minor differences between them anyway!!).
I think that time will tell that the truth on the "cheap gear is amazing/terrible" debate is predictably somewhere near the middle. It'll take us a while to get there, but the same goes for cheap anything. There are a couple of £300 Ibanez guitars in my shop that sound and play better than any number of £1000+ Strats, Jacksons and Les Pauls we have around, with one or two excetions. For the price, most people can't justify something three times the price for their bedroom hobby ... if there's anything I've learned in this game it's that
at some point, a hobby has to remain a hobby. Next time I have £1000 lying around, I'll be putting it towards replacing my car or paying off my student loans ... not blowing it on a hobby!!!
Meh. Happy New Year, guys.
Nik